Anders Bylund, The Motley Fool

Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 10:11 AM5 min read

• Rigetti Computing’s stock is down 48% from its peak after a massive run-up in 2024.

• Competition is fierce, with giants like Google, IBM, and Nvidia in the mix.

• The company continues to raise cash by selling more shares, leading to significant shareholder dilution.

• 10 stocks we like better than Rigetti Computing ›

Quantum computing specialist Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI) soared sky-high at the end of 2024, but gave back a lot of those gains in the first half of 2025. On June 25, the stock is trading 48% below January's peak prices. Will Rigetti's stock get a second wind someday soon, or could the price chart continue its retreat?

Let's find out.

Rigetti is no spring chicken. The company was founded in 2013 and delivered its first quantum computing services in the cloud four years later. Its systems rely on superconducting materials cooled nearly to absolute zero. It's a proven approach, but also a costly one with specialized materials managed by massive super-cooling machinery.

Nobody expects quantum computers to take over every data-crunching task, even in the long run. Rigetti proposes a hybrid approach where digital computers continue to be the workhorses of everyday computing needs, but with the option to tap into quantum computers for certain workloads. So the company develops solutions across this stack of technologies, from quantum chips and systems to the old-school software that assigns quantum jobs and reads the results.

Rigetti's management sees a huge long-term market in this integrated system philosophy. Last summer, management said that "practical quantum computing is poised to happen in the next few years and have significant commercial potential."

A significant breakthrough in quantum computing error correction arrived five months later. Rigetti's stock soared from roughly $1 to more than $21 per share in five weeks, as investors saw a quick route to commercial applications.

But the huge gains didn't last.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of semiconductor giant (and quantum-to-digital software developer) Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) said that practical quantum systems could be 20 years away. Huang tried to backtrack from that statement, but the market-moving effects held firm anyway.

At this point, Wall Street seems to have settled on a compromise between Rigetti's quick plans and Nvidia's long-term view. Despite losing approximately half of its peak gains, Rigetti's stock is still up tenfold over the last year.